By far the most accessed article on this website is the post Eggplant Pros & Cons, written during a period when I was consuming an unpresidented amount of eggplant and began to be worried about toxicity. As an article, it is boring, and I remember very little of the information contained therein. Nevertheless it receives approximately 17 times more traffic than any other post. I thought, if I were to give the Internet what it apparently wants, I would stock my site full of cost-benefit analyses of various foodstuffs, stick some clickbait ads on there, and wait for the magic to happen. Except that this sounds like possibly the most tedious job in the world, and I could probably still make more money waiting tables.

Pros & Cons inspiration did not strike again until the day when I was buying a half-gallon of Silk unsweetened cashew milk for my lactose-intolerant husband, and the bearded stranger in front of me in the Co-op checkout line volunteered that he never eats cashews because of the toxicity. A public service announcement, I guess. Even while I felt scornful about his food-paranoia, his warning nagged at me. I was trying to take care of my husband's health by reducing his obviously inflammatory milk consumption; what if, instead, I was slowly poisoning him with a concentrated brew of expressed cashew toxins?

Two or three months passed during which I continued to buy cashew milk for my husband, did no further research, and witnessed the sudden downfall of our democracy.

​This morning-- a Saturday morning in December, just before the electoral college ratifies the unthinkable-- I sat with my husband, eating a breakfast of bacon & eggs, toast and clementines, and drinking hot chocolate made with cashew milk. Please be advised: hot chocolate is NOT as good with cashew milk, though I have made it with almond milk and that is fine. For the first time, I thought to tell my husband of the bearded man's earnest warning. My husband scoffed. After all, he smokes, doesn't exercise, and has an unhealthy devotion to cheeseburgers. Is it really likely that cashew milk will take him down?

Beyond personal health, however, the exposure to urushiol inherent in cashew harvest and processing means that excessive cashew consumption may have ethical repercussions, as described in The Telegraph:

​​The nuts – 60 per cent of which are processed in India – are exceptionally hard to extract. A cashew has two layers of hard shell between which are caustic substances – cardol and anacardic acid – which can cause vicious burns.

Many of the women who work in the cashew industry have permanent damage to their hands from this corrosive liquid, because factories do not routinely provide gloves. For their pains they earn about 160 rupees for a 10-hour day: £1.70. [...]

Conditions in Vietnam may be even worse than in India. Cashews are sometimes shelled by drug addicts in forced labour camps, who are beaten and subjected to electric shocks. Time magazine has described this trade as “blood cashews”.

So there's that. I can't determine where Silk's cashews are sourced (notably absent from their FAQs, which provide this information re: soybeans and almonds). I would normally just give up, but in this new age of activism it occurred to me that I could ask them, so I wrote to inquire. Will let you know if they answer. [UPDATE: Silk says that their cashews come from "Africa, Brazil and Vietnam."]

Now that we have concluded that cashews are safe, if possibly unethical, to eat, I have a few words about another current American dietary trend, our toxic friend Donald J. Trump.

An asshat, yes, you say, but a dietary trend? What do you mean?

Just what I say. After the election, we spoke of five stages of grief. But, as far as I can currently tell, there have been only two stages of eating. 1) 48 hours or so (your experience may vary) of total loss of appetite, during which we had to remind one another to drink water and nobody cared if they had a splitting headache or were subsisting on a couple of handfuls of Ritz crackers. 2) A sustained, not-yet-over period of frantic stress-eating, legitimized widely by Anne Lamott confessing the same on Facebook, but shared by many, characterized by a massive intake of carbs (and sometimes alcohol) and a sudden absence of regard for one's own health or even vanity.

At some point it occurred to me to drink some bourbon, and it was like the best thing I had ever tasted.

And it's not just quantity, it's quality too. I don't feel like cooking. While broccoli still tastes great when it magically appears on my plate, I have stopped bothering to serve a salad with my pasta. Too much trouble, and who cares, really? We've taken to eating frozen burritos, frozen vegetables, accidentally-vegan macaroni-and-"cheese" out of a box. I buy candy, and chips, and donuts. This cannot be good for me, or us, or the world. Also, I don't want to become a drunk.

This is true toxicity, this hopelessness and insecurity and downright fear and dread that we feel. The unhealth of Trump's own food choices has somehow become contagious, even while all his other choices are ones we repudiate. At this rate, on January 21, the date of the Women's March, a sea of bloated, sad faces will fill the streets of Washington D.C., and we will march uncomfortably in our tight pants.

I have no solution to this. There are so few ways to make myself feel better these days, so few routes to pleasure-- which is different from happiness, now inaccessible. Pizza is accessible.

Tonight my husband and I will go to the bad diner. This is the one we choose when we're feeling low-energy, like after a long, horrible weekend day at work, or when we are sick or our cat has died. The food is unreliable and the coffee weak, but there is absolutely no pressure there. You can eat with your coat on if you're feeling chilled, or hunch over the table with eyes closed; the waitresses know us. My husband can get a cheeseburger.

Out Here, Up HereIncludes the best kitchen tip ever, from Nikki McClure via Orangette: soften butter by wedging it in cleavage.​

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​​There's a Price to Pay for Not Eating America's Ugly SeafoodAmericans are only comfortable with certain types of familiar seafood, many of which are imported and/or overfished. Meanwhile, other local ocean food resources are wasted or sold overseas. What would buying local look like when it comes to seafood?

Discomfort Food: Using Dinners to Talk About Race, Violence and AmericaChef Tunde Wey organizes dinner parties with diverse (but predominantly black) guest lists, to discuss race, social justice, and personal experience. “There was some sort of obscenity to the whole thing, this foodie movement,” he said. “You eat at one of these new restaurants with small plates, and the food tastes good, but it’s not saying anything. What it’s saying is just, ‘Look at me.’ It’s self-referential. That’s where the obscenity comes from: when you can say nothing, surrounded by so much to say.”

Unsponsored opinion: these Fig & Olive Crackers are like one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life. And I got them on sale at Whole Foods for $4.99! (Which seemed like a lot, until I saw that Amazon is selling them for $11.59.)

June 14Breakfast: lemon water, coffee, smoothie made from limeade, ricotta cheese, hemp protein powder, blueberries, frozen peaches, frozen strawberries, and kale. This tastes good when I first try it, but once it sits around a while the texture becomes lumpy. I think the limeade curdled the ricotta. Fortunately, I bought my husband some nice big stainless steel straws for our our anniversary ("silverware" being one of the traditional 5th anniversary gifts), and these make it easier to ignore the texture of our smoothies.

Mid-morning, I am in Silver Spring and have half an hour to kill before picking my kid up early from school, after a morning exam. The most convenient spot to buy a coffee near my parked car is the Tastee Diner, so I do something I don't normally do these days: go in and take a table by myself. For $3.98 (plus tip), I have a decaf coffee and "a biscuit" (but, when it arrives, it is two biscuits), with butter and jam. Quite a deal. I read a book. It is fun.

We get home about 10:30. A slow morning. After finally showering, I have another cup of coffee around noon and get to writing. Lunch after that: a leftover chicken leg, an attempt to reproduce the British "bacon roll" with soft white bakery toast, butter, and leftover cooked bacon from last night, and leftover asparagus. This was a lot of heavy food and the whole "bacon roll" thing just didn't taste quite right. It is no wonder that the scale says I have gained 5 lbs. since last Thursday. While this seems physically impossible, there is no doubt that I have been doing my best.

​After shopping, I put the chickpeas on to cook for Madhur Jaffrey's Swiss Chard with Tomatoes and Chickpeas, and turn my attention to other matters until they are done, 2 and a half hours later. At a more reasonable dinnertime, I prep the rest of the vegetables for this dish and stick a couple of red peppers in the oven to roast. As Jaffrey suggests, we eat the chard dish with a crusty wheat bread, two kinds of Italian cheese (an aged piave and a fresh asiago), and roasted red peppers. This is a pleasant meal; the bread-and-cheese board on the table is always popular when it appears at my house. I don't do it that often because, in order to control portion size, I tend to plate my family's meals in the kitchen. (This works well for us, except the part where kid tends to waste about 1/3 of the food on their plate. However, they do this even when they have served themselves.) I like the chard, especially the prep tip that suggests slicing the pretty red stems fairly small and cooking them along with the leaves. It's striking how much this adds to the visual attractiveness of the dish. I have also discovered, as I noted in a previous post, that I greatly prefer the texture of these long-cooked greens recipes when the pot is not covered. It requires adding some extra water, but the final texture is much less gelatinous.

​Have I forgotten to mention that I've been drinking a glass of wine most nights with dinner, or after dinner, for the past week or so? I have leftover bottles of both red and white wine open (as well as sherry. How long does sherry keep? Anecdotal answers range from one week to forever (I think the people who said "forever" might have been my parents). Tonight I have white wine.​Also, the last two mint chocolates. And I am hungry again before bed, so have a little more bread and cheese.June 15A regular work day. Breakfast: lemon water, coffee, smoothie made from raspberry lemonade, plain Greek yogurt, hemp protein powder, almond butter, blueberries, banana, and CSA lettuce. I had another cup of decaf coffee (lightened with heavy cream of late, as I finish up the cream from the cheesecake) before work, and another one once I got to work. I was hungry.

Lunch when I got home at 2:45 was regular coffee, the last leftover chicken leg from Friday night, and leftover asparagus. Then I had to rush back out again in order to take my kid to a brief doctor's appointment. Home again 4:45, more decaf coffee, reading, a very short nap, housework.

I started dinner about 6:30-- a use-up-what-you-have-in-the-house sort of affair. We had an egg scramble with CSA kohlrabi and garlic scapes, cilantro and the last of the fresh asiago cheese; also fruit salad made with blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and the first good peaches of the year; and white bakery toast with cream cheese and the blackberry jam we bought at the beach. Also I had a glass of red wine.

​June 16No work today; my last day at home before my husband and I go on a three-day weekend trip to Shenandoah National Park. We've been looking forward to it. But I have lots to do today. I have the usual breakfast, unusually early (husband woke up at 5:15 for some reason): lemon water, coffee, smoothie made from pear juice, hemp protein powder, avocado, banana, blueberries, strawberries, and CSA red lettuce. This was a particularly pleasant one. Nothing weird.

After showering and dressing, another cup of decaf while I get to work on my computer. That's the last of the heavy cream; kind of a relief.

By lunchtime, my kid is home from their last final exam (goodbye, 9th grade!) and I have a couple of errands to do in town, so we go out for lunch at our local Thai restaurant, eat outside at a table on the sidewalk. Kid orders up a storm, and I have a garden roll (fresh veggies and rice noodles wrapped in rice paper, peanut dipping sauce), an eel-and-avocado sushi roll, and a pomegranate lemonade, of which I drink half (kid finishes it). Somehow we manage to spend $46 on lunch. And it wasn't because of me, just saying.

When we get home, I have coffee, and in the afternoon, there is another cup of decaf, of course. I can't say what I was doing; husband and I are going away for a long weekend tomorrow, and this day is a blur in retrospect. Always so much to do to get ready.

For dinner, I fix some fusilli pasta with sauce made from things I need to get rid of: canned plum tomatoes, fresh sage, fresh tomatoes, garlic scapes, red wine. We sprinkle some goat cheese on top, but this turns out to be a mistake, because the goat cheese tastes slightly rancid. Goddamn co-op, which is terrible about keeping on top of product freshness. I paid like $6.50 for that cheese. Side salad of mixed lettuces, cilantro, strawberries, balsamic vinaigrette. Glass of white wine.

All right, all right. Who needs a recipe to make a smoothie? Nobody, that's who. By definition, a smoothie is just a bunch of stuff you throw in a blender. Nevertheless, a year or so ago, I was staying with my parents; my mom was starting to go through chemo for a non-Hodgkins lymphoma (she's okay); and smoothies were recommended as a way for her to effortlessly take in some extra calories. For my 80-something-year-old stepfather, for whom smoothies are not part of his daily experience, you would have thought the nurses had recommended he feed her on homemade Beef Wellington. I gave demos. My stepfather watched carefully, frowned. They bought an immersion blender. Still, it was rumored that , after I left, smoothies did not get made until my mom felt enough better to go back into the kitchen.

So maybe it IS rocket science, after all. I will say: I work at a restaurant that sells a variety of fresh blended juices, fruit-and-yogurt drinks, and milkshakes. Sometimes a customer comes in and asks for "a smoothie," and looks perturbed when asked to elaborate further. What might they be looking for in their smoothie? Do they just want fruit and ice and such? Do they want yogurt and milk? Do they want something with ice cream? The weird part is, some of them don't know. They are accustomed to ordering a "smoothie," and having not the faintest idea what they are putting into their mouths.

While smoothies can take an infinite variety of forms, the following basic formula is how I go about making a smoothie. I generally make about 32 oz. of smoothie at once, which is enough for two tall glasses, one for me and one for my husband. Also note that we treat these smoothies as a meal, not a beverage. Therefore they have enough calories for a light meal, and always contain some fat and protein. If you make a habit of drinking them as a beverage in addition to a meal, you will get fat.

Basic formula:

2 c. liquid, such as nut milk, soy milk, coconut water. For a while I used juice, but my husband found that the sugar content was making him feel queasy. Cow milk does not agree with us too well, so I rarely use that.

About 2 t. protein powder. I do not like the texture of protein powder, so I keep it minimal, but add a little for the nutritional boost.

Fat. This is necessary to make the smoothie filling. An avocado, a couple tablespoons of nut butter, canned coconut milk, or sour cream are all good candidates.

Enough fruit and vegetables to fill the blender to the 4 c. mark. The fruit can be anything you desire and/or want to use up: bananas, mangoes, berries, peaches, melon, kiwi, cherries, pineapple. It is nice to use a little bit of frozen fruit, as it chills the smoothie. A few leaves of leafy greens ( e.g., spinach, lettuce, kale) really give the smoothie depth of flavor as well as beneficial nutrients. Remember to remove tough stems and ribs from leaves such as kale.

Optional: yogurt, anything else you are looking to use up.

Here are some examples of smoothies that followed this basic formula, and ended up being exceptionally tasty:

Has anyone else noticed that recipes always call for unsalted butter now? Also: kosher salt. It's just the past couple of years, but once it struck me it was everywhere. Of 42 recipes in the September 2015 issue of Bon Appetit mentioning salt, 31 called specifically for kosher salt, only 7 just for "salt," and 4 for flaky sea salt (a trend that is apparently past its prime). This includes baked goods and sweets. Of 15 recipes that called for butter, 14 called for unsalted butter, and 1 for clarified butter or ghee. Zero recipes simply read "butter" (which in cookbook-speak means salted butter, or at least it used to).

A survey of the last twenty internet recipes I bookmarked to cook later yields 12 mentions of unsalted butter and only 2 of "butter." There are 9 mentions of kosher salt and 1 of "coarse salt" vs. 7 of "fine sea salt" and 3 just of "salt"-- about even in terms of coarse vs. fine. (Recipes from The New York Times, The Tipsy Baker, Smitten Kitchen, Food & Wine, Ruth Reichl, Andrew Zimmern, Orangette, and TheFauxMartha.) One thing is clear, however: most people now feel that they have to specify what kind of salt they're talking about. Waaay back in 2012, everybody's home cooking guru Deb Perelman wrote in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: "You might notice that I call for table salt in most recipes, which might seem odd in an age where salt varieties can take up several grocery store shelves. I did this for consistency. Different types, and even brands, of salt have different weights and thus saltiness that they impart to a recipe... I do call for kosher and sea salts in recipes where I feel the texture of the salt improves the final taste." Well, fast forward a few years, and Smitten Kitchen's online recipes have begun to conform more to fashion: out of 12 recipes I recently bookmarked, 4 call for either kosher or coarse salt, 7 call for fine sea salt (sometimes adding "or table salt"), and only one simply called for table salt. Oh, Deb! We count on you to be down-to-earth!

What does this mean? Why are regular butter and salt suddenly mean and unacceptable, lacking in grace and precision? What has occurred, not only between my grandmother's church cookbook and Bon Appetit, but between 2012 and today? I became very curious about where such recipe trends come from, and how they catch on.

Unfortunately, trends rarely come with a big dose of self-awareness and reflection, so when I tried to research the recent rise in popularity of unsalted butter, what I mostly saw was people talking about how unsalted butter has always been preferable for controlling salt content in dishes, and better because (and I have never heard this discussed before) salt is a preservative, and therefore unsalted butter is fresher. Ohhkay. We have always been at war with Eastasia. The Kitchn does acknowledge that tastes have changed, and offers a reader poll asking which type of butter folks keep on hand (count me in the "both" column; but "unsalted" wins for these probably fairly food-sophisticated readers). Notably, butter consumption overall hit a 40-year high in 2014, and googling "unsalted butter trendy" will lead you to much discussion of the paleo craze for butter coffee. Which, if you ask me, is gross. I would totally try it if I were in Tibet, though. This story on butter consumption from Associated Milk Producers Inc. does vaguely reference the fact that "though salted butter is the clear preference of consumers, AMPI sales of unsalted quarters have been steadily growing." They would know. But I cannot find hard statistics about salted vs. unsalted butter sales anywhere.

Now, on to salt. Serious Eats did a great basic article on salt use in recipes in 2013. Key points: "chemically there is virtually no difference between table salt, kosher salt, and fancy sea salt.[...] Dissolve those salts in water side by side, and the differences between them become nearly indistinguishable, just as they are when you use them to season your food." Yeeessss. However, when NOT dissolved, texture can matter. The biggest reason cited here (and elsewhere as well) for using kosher (=coarse) salt preferentially is that it is easier to sprinkle by hand-- easier to pick up with your fingers, and easier to apply evenly. As for flaky sea salts, the following:

Chefs like using them because they add crunchy texture and a burst of salinity that adds interest to plated foods. It should be used exclusively for finishing dishes. Scattering on the tops of glazed loaves of bread before baking. Sprinkling over sliced perfectly cooked steak just before serving. Adding a touch of crunch to slivers of raw scallops. You get the picture. Fancy-pants food.​If you're using your fancy sea salt to cook with, on the other hand, you may as well replace your toilet paper with dollar bills, because you are flushing all of its good features down the toilet.

All this makes a great deal of sense. So why is Bon Appetit calling for kosher salt in everything from honey cake to dip? (Both of the above involve premeasured quantities of salt that is destined to dissolve.) I kept running across mentions in my research of "chefs" preferring kosher salt, or even sometimes "TV chefs," or specifically "American TV chefs." From Forward.com: "'So much of TV cooking is visual,” [Mort] Satin [VP of science and research for The Salt Institute] reasoned. 'Shaking a little salt shaker could not compete with dipping into a bowl of kosher salt and casting the large, very visible salt crystals across the dish like Toscanini waving his baton across the orchestra. Flair, panache… magic.'" Is this why I'm supposed to use kosher salt in everything?-- so that I can look dramatic while seasoning my soup?

My guess is that there is a kind of circular action here. The more recipes call for kosher salt (perhaps for initially valid reasons), and the more people start keeping little pots of kosher salt sitting around their kitchens to sprinkle by hand, the handier it becomes to use kosher salt in your next recipe-- you already bought some! It's sitting right there! And if you end up publishing that recipe, "kosher salt" becomes the instruction, whether logically necessary or not. (Measurements do not translate 1:1 for kosher vs. table salt, so you can't simply convert all written instructions back to the nonspecific "salt.")

But Junkfood Science, even way back in 2006, said: "...over recent decades, Americans are increasingly shunning ordinary table salt; and commercial restaurants, food processors and chefs have abandoned iodized salt in response to consumer concerns it could affect the taste of foods; preferring “natural” sea salts, kosher salts and noniodized salts. Last month, Food Technology reported that this fad, along with attempts to reduce salt intakes, may be the most significant factor leading us to deficiencies again. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys found that from the 1971-1974 to 2001-2002 examinations, iodine excretion in adults dropped from 320 mcg/L to 168 mcg/L — by nearly half — and the frequency of iodine deficiencies in pregnant women jumped from 1% to 7%."

Another culprit-- probably a more important one-- besides our use of fancy gourmet salts is the prevalence of processed food; The Salt Institute (admittedly, an industry trade association) also says "Salt used in processed foods is not iodized. Given that people are cooking less at home and buying either restaurant or processed foods, iodine intakes in the U.S. have declined from about 250 μg/day to 157 micrograms/day." Sorry, what? Processed foods don't use iodized salt either? Sign me up for regular use of the everyday carton of boring salt, please. I'll keep my kosher salt, Maldon sea salt flakes, and coarse Mediterranean sea salt for special occasions and, yes, Bon Appetit recipes.

I will keep posting this picture until Madhur Jaffrey is done with the goddamn eggplants.

I'm not talking about cons like "slimy," or "absorbs too much oil" (though these things are true), or pros like "takes on flavors well" and "is pretty" (when raw!). Given the amount of eggplant I've been eating in these last weeks, I would like to know: how does it stack up nutritionally? And (most important of all), is eating a ton of it harmful?

ProsAccording to The World's Healthiest Foods, eggplant contains a healthful assortment of phytonutrients, many of which have antioxidant properties. These phytochemicals protect against cancer, microbial infection, and high cholesterol. Eggplant skin contains a phytonutrient called nasunin which protects brain cell membranes from damage. When laboratory animals were given eggplant juice, their high cholesterol levels were reduced and their blood vessel walls relaxed, improving their cardiovascular health. Eggplant is a good source of dietary fiber, vitamins B1 & B6, manganese and copper.

Fun fact: nobody appears to know how many calories eggplant has. I saw it listed in various places as anywhere from 2-35 calories/cup. In any case, it is low in calories (as long as you don't douse it in oil) and very low in sugars.

It appears, however, to be fairly high in sodium. Or not. How on earth is one to get reliable nutritional data?

ConsEggplant contains a measurable level of oxalates, which at high enough concentrations in bodily fluids can crystallize and cause stones in kidney or gall bladder. For this reason, individuals who already have kidney or gall bladder trouble are often advised to avoid eggplant.

Nightshade plants (which also include potatoes, tomatoes, and other things we routinely eat) contain a chemical called solanine which is a natural pesticide. In large enough quantities, this chemical is toxic to humans and can cause gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms. Actual solanine poisoning episodes have mostly been recorded with potatoes (you know, those green ones they warn you about), and eating too many potatoes seems more dangerous than eating too much eggplant.

Some people appear to be convinced that they were poisoned by eating a relatively small amount of eggplant. I don't know what to make of that, although the author of this post suggests that the problem may specifically be underripe eggplant. (But how can you tell if an eggplant is underripe??)

Sorry. But, it's true, your food was once alive. Also, I lost my camera for two weeks, remember?

I have a new default way of cooking chicken. Originally, it was adapted from a recipe I'm sure I could no longer find on the internet... something, e.g., from Allrecipes or Epicurious. But I've found that the method is simple, infinitely adaptable and consistently comes out well. So here is a sort of universal braised chicken recipe, in the spirit of Amy Dacyczyn's muffins.

You will need:*chicken (I like dark meat better for this-- and in general!-- but white meat works okay too)*salt and pepper*some kind of cooking oil*butter*bouillon, Better-than-Bouillon, soy sauce, or some other salty/umami flavoring*aromatic(s) such as garlic, onion, fresh ginger, etc.*fresh herbs if you have some lying around

1) Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat until hot. Add a small amount of cooking oil (your choice; olive is good). Sprinkle your chicken pieces with salt and pepper (or do this in the pan). Brown chicken pieces for 3-4 minutes on each side, just to give them a bit of color.

2) Push your chicken pieces out towards the side of the pan a bit in order to create a well in the center. Throw in a a chunk of butter (maybe 2-3 T.). As the butter is melting, add your bouillon or etc. I most often use about a teaspoon of Better-than-Bouillon (vegetable or chicken flavor works). A single bouillon cube would work. A couple of tablespoons of tamari or a little gochu jang would probably work. Use whatever you have around, but something that is fairly concentrated: not canned or boxed broth. Whatever it is will be melting into the butter as you throw your aromatics into the well: a few slices of garlic, half a sliced onion, slices of ginger root, chopped shallot, or whatever you have that needs using up. There's no need to chop these finely; they are there to impart flavor to the liquid.

3) Lay a few sprigs of fresh herbs, etc., over the top of the chicken (again, no need to chop). I know that you have something languishing in your refrigerator that just needs a good home: leftover parsley, cilantro, basil, mint, rosemary, sage, thyme... something you bought for a recipe and didn't use up. Perhaps some fresh scallions. Or maybe you don't have any of these, and you want to throw in some carrots or celery or mushrooms at this point. Go for it. Just lay 'em on top.

​4) The pan should be bubbling like crazy, the butter browning, the kitchen scented with garlic and onion and herbs. Add a bit of water to the pan-- not too much, enough to cover the bottom by about 1/4-1/2 inch. Put a lid on it and turn the heat down (but not so much so that it stops bubbling-- you want a gentle-to-moderate bubble). Cook for about 45 minutes for chicken on the bone; you could (and should) get away with less for thin white meat. When you open the lid, the liquid will have concentrated into a delicious sauce for rice or bread, and your chicken will be moist and very flavorful.

This is the kind of chicken that you can throw together in about 10 minutes (mostly the time it takes to brown the meat), then allow to cook while you make the other components of the meal. It's perfect for someone like me, who so often has a vegetable dish that I intend to make the star of the evening; I have a habit of simply writing down "protein" on my shopping list as a reminder that I need to purchase something to go with the vegetable-of-the-day. This chicken can be, and often is, that protein. And you don't need to buy anything except the chicken, because everything else is already in your pantry. Yay!

In case you were wondering, this is not an original photo. However, it is a very nice picture of muffins.

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Does everybody remember Amy Dacyczyn, of The Tightwad Gazette? Her newsletter was an inspiration in the 1990s to everyone wanting tips and tricks for getting off the personal consumption treadmill. If Your Money or Your Life was the Bible of the voluntary simplicity movement, Dacyczyn's work was the marginalia: all the comments, the letters, the life hacks, the small stuff of which the big ideas are made. I devoured the thick compendium of all her newsletters in 2002, as my first husband and I were struggling to get out of debt and achieve a reasonable quality of life with two very low incomes, a foster teenager, and a baby.

(What is Dacyczyn doing now? Well, it seems that she just went ahead and retired. Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar did an interview with her in 2014, for those that are looking for an update, but I can't promise it's very exciting.)

Now, at the risk perhaps of copyright infringement (but I have a feeling she wouldn't care), I'd like to share the single most useful recipe I have ever encountered, courtesy of this fine and resourceful writer. The "Little Multigrain Herb Muffins" I just posted are based on this recipe, as are pretty much all other muffins I make. (I literally keep her 959-page tome in my household for this sole purpose-- pp. 466-468!) As the primary cook for a new family in 2002, the very concept was earth-shattering: a "recipe" that did not require you to go out and buy special ingredients, but which gave you a blueprint for transforming whatever you already had lying around into something delicious. You can find the entirety of her article here; the crucial text, to me, reads

Instead of sharing a single muffin recipe, I wanted to share the process of creating muffin recipes. This will allow you to use ingredients that are cheap in your part of the country, use up odd leftovers, and accommodate dietary restrictions.

Each of the components above gets some discussion from Dacyczyn (again, see here), but here are some notes from me (some of which overlap with hers):

*It is easiest if at least 1 cup of the grain is white all-purpose flour. The rest can be pretty much anything you want: whole wheat flour, other grain flours, oats, cornmeal, breakfast cereal (I've done this), stale baked goods. Usually I use 3 or 4 things. I think one time I used Grapenuts, because nobody likes them, including me. They worked fine.*You can substitute other interesting liquids for milk.*fat can be anything but it is obviously desirable to liquify it before adding to the muffins. Besides butter, oil, shortening, etc., I have also used things like sour cream and peanut butter. *If you choose to use a liquid form of sweetener (honey, maple syrup, that corn syrup that's been in the back of your cupboard for five years, Torani raspberry Italian soda syrup), reduce the quantity of milk/liquid by 1/4 c.*Use a full 1 T. of baking powder if you have any significant quantity of additions. Dacyczyn's universal recipe actually just reads "2 t. baking powder," but I usually go with 3 t. unless the muffins are very tiny.*You can add a little more salt than this if you like, especially as the trend has gone towards sweet+salty baked goods*Be creative about additions. I have added many different fruits (fresh and dried), nuts, coconut, chocolate, herbs, cheeses, vegetables, and more. Or, if you don't have much in the way of additions, you can simply create an interesting texture and taste through mixing grains and adding spices or herbs. Just use what you have. It is so easy.

Whatever you have stirred up: grease muffin tins, or use papers, fill cups about 2/3 full, and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool another 20 minutes before consuming.

The universal muffin recipe should never be allowed to die. Please, if anyone knows any more great universal recipes, I would love to hear about them.

I don't own a microwave. Neither does my niece Megan. Apparently we are among the fewer than 10% of American households that do not (although an attempt to source that statistic just led to a long chain of assertions citing other assertions all the way back to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, who in turn cited a study from 1997. So it is perfectly possible that over 90% of American households don't own a microwave anymore. They don't last that long.)

When I married for the first time in 1999, my then-mother-in-law gave us a microwave as a present. We stuck it on the top shelf of our broom closet until she came to visit, at which point my then-husband, in a mom-is-coming-to-visit panic, insisted on pulling it out and placing it in a visible location on the kitchen counter. He did not, however, think to look inside it, so my then-mother-in-law opened the door to discover the glass plate still wrapped in its original packing material. She was dismayed and worried aloud about why we had not used this most basic of kitchen appliances.

Why not? We just didn't want to. Did we really believe there was any danger in it? I don't know. My ex-husband may have. But I imagine the no-microwave rule really came from me. It's not a food-safety thing, it's an aesthetic thing. Food just doesn't taste as good coming out of a microwave. There is no browning to create sweetness or complexity of flavor. If reheating, the food reheats unevenly and does not stay hot as long, for some reason (actual physicists, when asked, suggest the latter phenomenon depends on the former). The process feels sterile and cut off from our rich food culture, in which warming a pot on the stove or a pan in the oven carry significant emotional and familial resonance.

No big deal. Megan and I just don't have one. But there is a problem: a whole generation of people are growing up without the requisite skills to heat things up (e.g., leftovers). Even some older people have forgotten how to warm up their food without a microwave. Frozen food companies contribute to the problem by not including anything other than microwave directions on many of their prepared dinners, or selling basic frozen vegetables in special packages designed to be microwave-only. I try not to buy a lot of frozen dinners, but I cannot tell you how annoying it is to purchase something, only to discover there are no oven directions. And frozen vegetables? It takes five minutes to warm them up in a pan with a little water. Why would you need to pay more to microwave them in the bag, (unless you are living in a hotel or a dorm room)?

But the real issue is the leftovers. No microwave? What to do? Eat them cold? Throw them away? This truly seems to be the state of cluelessness to which we have arrived. I have seen numerous people whom I respect suffer a complete brain meltdown when it comes to this issue: my daughter, my husband, my mother. People who know better. But how do I heat this up? Let me remind you, smart modern humans, that we still have all the basic cooking methods available to us (baking, frying, boiling), and all of these can easily be adapted to reheat our leftovers. It's not hard and often it doesn't take any longer than a microwave (certainly not in my insane overactive toaster oven).

1) baking. Place leftovers on/in a baking pan and place in the oven at a medium-high heat (400 degrees is usually good, except not in my insane overactive toaster oven, where 400 degrees will burn your food to a crisp in approximately 18 seconds). If there is only a small amount of food and you can arrange it into a small rectangle, a toaster oven is quicker and takes less energy.

2) frying. If your food contains adequate moisture, simply place in a pan on the stove and allow to heat, stirring occasionally, until hot. (Technically this is not frying unless you use some fat, but oil is often unnecessary for reheating unless you expect the food to stick.)

3) boiling. If your food does not contain adequate moisture, add a little bit. For instance, to reheat cold dried-out rice, add a small amount of water to the pan (maybe only a tablespoon or two) before heating. Get that water steaming on high heat, then turn down to low until the food is hot.

The only one of these things that takes substantially longer than microwaving is reheating a large quantity of food in the oven (e.g., reheating a whole casserole dish or pie). But the only real reason to do this is if you are rewarming leftovers for a family meal, in which case it is not an unreasonable amount of effort to stick something in the oven and walk away for 15 or 20 minutes. (Also, the words "reheating a whole casserole dish or pie" are crazy evocative of my grandmother's house, and by extension a whole Middle American culinary culture that is dying a sad but not undeserved death, and who really reheats casseroles anymore, unless they are spending time with elderly people in Iowa?)​So, Megan, I am relieved that a mere 30-year-old like yourself has the confidence and the skill set (not to mention your fine aesthetic sense) to go microwave-free, and I hope my daughter will grow up to be like you someday. Thanks again for Thanksgiving dinner, and for marrying someone who brings so much to the table (literally). No nukes! --your aunt

Seriously, why? Why would anyone, ever, buy salad dressing in a bottle? Back when I met my husband, he was living with his niece and grand-niece, and their refrigerator always had several open bottles of salad dressing in it, all different flavors. One time, when he was sick, I went through the cabinet and found many more, unopened bottles, some of which were expired. They hoarded salad dressing. A lot of it got thrown out. It cost them, I would guess, $2-$4 per bottle. Yet, it contained ingredients like (for instance), xanthan gum, citric acid, propylene glycol alginate (what?), and Polysorbate 60. And, more importantly, it tasted gross. It tasted like childhood and the grudging consumption of bowls of iceberg lettuce and cucumber doused with Catalina. It tasted like hospital cafeterias and Wendy's salad bar. Do people not understand how incredibly easy it is to "make your own salad dressing?" It hardly even rises to the definition of "make your own," unless whisking something with a fork is an act of creation. A fat, an acid, seasoning. Whisk. Eat delicious salad.

Okay, we're going to walk you through this. 1) Get a small bowl out of the cupboard.2) Pour some oil into the bowl. Olive oil tastes good and is a common choice. Anything will do, though.3) Pour some acid into the bowl, probably about 1/3-1/2 as much as you did oil. No need to measure, that's just complicating matters. Delicious acids: balsamic vinegar. Lemon juice. Apple cider vinegar. Red wine vinegar. But use whatever you have. Lime juice. Herb vinegar. Hell, white vinegar for cleaning is better than Kraft. Whatever. I have used salsa (tomatoes are acidic).4) Season with salt and pepper.5) Whisk.6) Drizzle over salad (but not more than a few minutes before you want to eat it, or it will wilt). Toss (or don't bother, seriously). Eat delicious salad.

​If you made too much, put the rest in a jar and shake it up when you want to eat delicious salad again tomorrow. But this is so, so, so very easy to "make" that you can really just do it fresh every time you have a salad. Why is there bottled salad dressing? Why?

Advanced practice:7) If you're the sort of person who is dismayed that the dressing you just made is not sweet like Catalina (and sometimes I am), you can add a little honey or maple syrup before whisking. Granulated sugar does not work so well. Anything liquid is okay, though. I've used corn syrup (shh). I've used the raspberry Italian soda syrup that my daughter bought for making sno-cones four years ago. Whatever.8) Add a little mustard with the above sweeteners. Voila! Honey mustard dressing.9) If you like your dressing creamy, you can add a small spoonful of sour cream or mayonnaise. This works well with the salsa I mentioned before: Southwestern dressing!10) Add soy sauce to your dressing instead of salt-- voila! Asian dressing! Using peanut or sesame oil here works well, as does a sprinkling of powdered ginger. Rice vinegar can be a good acid. But don't be afraid to mix and match: soy sauce, lemon, and olive oil makes a perfectly respectable dressing.

I guarantee you, once you get in the habit of dressing your own salads with whatever you have lying around in your kitchen, you will feel really stupid for ever buying bottled dressing. It's not more convenient. It isn't cheaper. And it doesn't taste better. Who convinced consumers that they needed Kraft French Dressing and Hidden Valley Ranch? We Americans are a bunch of dumbasses. That is all. Open your cupboard and take back your salad. Peace.